Whole Wheat Rocombole

Rocombole doesn't have a great English translation. In the US, as far as I can gather, Rocombole is called "Swiss Roll," which is funny, because the Swiss don't seem to know what a Swiss Roll is. Normally I steer clear of giving edicts or setting definitions, especially online, because drawing a line is notoriously difficult to do, without the added pressure of claiming expertise online! But in this case, I am literally half Swiss, so I've happened to ask numerous Swiss people, and they have no idea what a Swiss Roll is. It's not a thing there. So it's a Brazilian dessert, named after an American image of a Swiss dessert, which never existed.

Roc-om-bol-e will forever be how I know this dessert, and boy do I know it well. I can't tell you how many Rocomboles I have eaten in my lifetime, but I can tell you they must number in the hundreds by now. Birthdays, holidays, backyard barbecue parties. The decadent caramel taste, the sticky caramel texture, the lightly sweetened fluffy cake...the joyful flavor of this delish dessert comes back to me like the smell of water coming out of a garden hose and the sound of clumsy bumble bees bumbling. 

Like many Brazilian desserts, Rocombole is the fruit of human ingenuity and imagination, but the ingredients and tools you need to make it are inexpensive and readily accessible. You'll need a hand mixer, and a baking sheet that is just under an inch deep. If you've got a bigger or smaller crowd coming, the recipe is really easy to adjust. Basically it's a meringue-based sponge cake batter, in a 1:1:1 ratio: One spoon each of sugar, and flour, for each egg. It tastes even better the next day, as cake slowly takes on moisture from the caramel filling. The filling itself is just a can of sweetened condensed milk, cooked in a bain marie, inside of a pressure cooker.

Bain Marie is normally a term for cooking something in a water bath. The classic example of this is custard, to me crème brûlée is a quintessential example, but I also think of flan. Whenever you want to cook something evenly, which is the basis of any custard, you cook it in a bain marie. This recipe is no different from that, but instead of an oven, you're using a pressure cooker. It's just another example of how pressure can be harnessed to speed up your life. It's 40 minutes on pressure in the cooker. I would think an instant pot is about the same, but again I'm just too partial to my little steampunk pressure cooker. All gaskets and valves, no electronics. But I digress.

Mãe started changing the recipe later in life, making the sponge cake with whole wheat flour instead of white flour. Sometimes I'm not a fan of changing up the flours. Nobody is going to get their recommended daily allowance of fiber and protein from eating caramel-filled spongecake. For me it's not about making a "healthier" dessert, it's about whether the flavor and texture of whole wheat actually pair better with the other flavors. Whole wheat flour is great if you want to add a nutty hint of flavor and a slight sandy crunch. The whole wheat also darkens the sponge cake a bit, which looks neat.